Thursday, June 18, 2015

The ride to Lumbini was a soul soothing ride. The road was good and the ride was trouble free. We reached Lumbini late afternoon and were guided to a ‘hotel’ by the traffic police in the centre of town. It was a 2/3 room hotel with bare necessities and included safe parking for our bikes. The owner offered to go get our tickets for the Lumbini park wherein all the temples and the birth place of Buddha lay, to ensure we did not waste time in standing queues to purchase tickets. We utilised the time to freshen up and eat a roti or two made by the owner’s wife and were ready to explore by the time we had the tickets to the Lumbini park.

To get the local flavour we hired a cycle rickshaw to take us around the huge park with the driver as our guide.

Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Japan and India have their temples there, each one trying to outdo the other in beauty. We loved whatever we could see as some were closed for the day or renovations. You can admire them in the pictures below.

The Golden pagoda of Myanmar

Thailand temple

International Goutami Nun's Temple

Finally we went to the most important place of all – the birth place of Buddha. Obviously this

occupied the prime place in the park. The solemnity there was calming.

After paying our due respects to all we got back on the cycle rick to get back to our hotel and rest for the night to get ready for our next day’s ride to Pokhra, an exotic destination!